GED Social Studies Practice Test 1

Employment increased in 30 large metro areas from November 2022 to November 2023

January 08, 2024

Employment increased in 30 large metropolitan areas (those with a population of at least 1 million in the 2010 Census) from November 2022 to November 2023 and was essentially unchanged in 21 large metropolitan areas. The largest percentage increases occurred in Jacksonville, Florida; Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, Nevada; and Raleigh, North Carolina (3.8 percent each).

From November 2022 to November 2023, which of the following metropolitan areas experienced the highest percentage change in nonfarm employment?

Age Distribution for U.S. Population: 2000, 2010, and 2020 Censuses

When people do not know exactly how old someone is, they often guess ages that end in preferred digits, such as 0 or 5. Demographers refer to this as “age heaping.” Age heaping is a common issue with a census or a survey where people are allowed to report for another household member or even a neighbor.

One approach for measuring age heaping in population data is called “Whipple’s Index.” As age heaping increases, so does the Whipple Index.

It is the most common approach used by other national statistical offices and international organizations. The Whipple’s Index data is often offered alongside US Census information, as seen in the figure shown.

Based on the Whipple’s Index listed in the graph, which of the following options is a correct interpretation of the results?

U.S. District Courts–Civil Judicial Facts and Figures (September 30, 2022)

The figure marked “Table 4.11” shows the number of civil cases that are pending in U.S. District Courts, per fiscal year and includes the length of time they are pending.

Which of the following statements accurately describes the relationship between the “Length of Time” and “Total Cases Pending” in the U.S. District Courts—Civil Cases Pending data?

Here is an extract from a leaflet from The Women’s Social and Political Union:

The author mentions Mr. Winston Churchill’s regulations framed in 1910. The political significance of referencing these regulations in Mr. Ball’s case is:

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”

President Obama, January 21, 2013

In President Obama’s 2013 inauguration speech, he references “sung and unsung”. What is the best description of those words (in this context)?

Emancipation Proclamation

By the President of the United States of America:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

“That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.”

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 marked a pivotal moment in American history, which was:

Types of Cases Heard

Based on the information above, select all of the following instances that the federal court system would be involved.

16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Federal Income Tax (1913)

Far-reaching in its social as well as its economic impact, the income tax amendment became part of the Constitution by a curious series of events culminating in a bit of political maneuvering that went awry.

The financial requirements of the Civil War prompted the first American income tax in 1861. At first, Congress placed a flat 3-percent tax on all incomes over $800 and later modified this principle to include a graduated tax. Congress repealed the income tax in 1872, but the concept did not disappear.

After the Civil War, the growing industrial and financial markets of the eastern United States generally prospered. But the farmers of the south and west suffered from low prices for their farm products, while they were forced to pay high prices for manufactured goods. Throughout the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, farmers formed such political organizations as the Grange, the Greenback Party, the National Farmers’ Alliance, and the People’s (Populist) Party. All of these groups advocated many reforms (see the Interstate Commerce Act) considered radical for the times, including a graduated income tax.

How did the historical context of the financial requirements of the Civil War influence the development and ratification of the 16th Amendment, establishing Congress’s right to impose a Federal income tax?

Bill of Rights

The following text is a transcription of the first ten amendments, also known as the “Bill of Rights”

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

What amendment allows for the right to own firearms?

Declaration of Independence

By issuing the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. The Declaration summarized the colonists’ motivations for seeking independence. By declaring themselves an independent nation, the American colonists were able to confirm an official alliance with the Government of France and obtain French assistance in the war against Great Britain.

Throughout the 1760s and early 1770s, the North American colonists found themselves increasingly at odds with British imperial policies regarding taxation and frontier policy. When repeated protests failed to influence British policies, and instead resulted in the closing of the port of Boston and the declaration of martial law in Massachusetts, the colonial governments sent delegates to a Continental Congress to coordinate a colonial boycott of British goods. When fighting broke out between American colonists and British forces in Massachusetts, the Continental Congress worked with local groups, originally intended to enforce the boycott, to coordinate resistance against the British. British officials throughout the colonies increasingly found their authority challenged by informal local governments, although loyalist sentiment remained strong in some areas.

Despite these changes, colonial leaders hoped to reconcile with the British Government, and all but the most radical members of Congress were unwilling to declare independence. However, in late 1775, Benjamin Franklin, then a member of the Secret Committee of Correspondence, hinted to French agents and other European sympathizers that the colonies were increasingly leaning towards seeking independence. While perhaps true, Franklin also hoped to convince the French to supply the colonists with aid. Independence would be necessary, however, before French officials would consider the possibility of an alliance.

Throughout the winter of 1775–1776, the members of the Continental Congress came to view reconciliation with Britain as unlikely, and independence the only course of action available to them. When on December 22, 1775, the British Parliament prohibited trade with the colonies, Congress responded in April of 1776 by opening colonial ports—this was a major step towards severing ties with Britain. The colonists were aided by the January publication of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, which advocated the colonies’ independence and was widely distributed throughout the colonies. By February of 1776, colonial leaders were discussing the possibility of forming foreign alliances and began to draft the Model Treaty that would serve as a basis for the 1778 alliance with France. Leaders for the cause of independence wanted to make certain that they had sufficient congressional support before they would bring the issue to the vote. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion in Congress to declare independence. Other members of Congress were amenable but thought some colonies not quite ready. However, Congress did form a committee to draft a declaration of independence and assigned this duty to Thomas Jefferson.

Which statement about the Declaration of Independence in the passage is factual?

Missouri Compromise (1820)

This legislation admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a non-slave state at the same time, so as not to upset the balance between slave and free states in the nation. It also outlawed slavery above the 36º 30′ latitude line in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory.

Missouri Compromise, (1820), in U.S. history, measure worked out between the North and the South and passed by the U.S. Congress that allowed for admission of Missouri as the 24th state (1821). It marked the beginning of the prolonged sectional conflict over the extension of slavery that led to the American Civil War.

The territory of Missouri first applied for statehood in 1817, and by early 1819 Congress was considering enabling legislation that would authorize Missouri to frame a state constitution. When Rep. James Tallmadge of New York attempted to add an antislavery amendment to that legislation on February 13, 1819, however, there ensued an ugly and rancorous debate over slavery and the government’s right to restrict slavery. The Tallmadge amendment prohibited the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and provided for emancipation of those already there when they reached age 25. The amendment passed the House of Representatives, controlled by the more-populous North, but failed in the Senate, which was equally divided between free and slave states. Congress adjourned without resolving the Missouri question.

The following summer a considerable body of public opinion in the North was rallied in support of the Tallmadge proposal. Much of that anti-Missouri sentiment, as it was called, arose from a genuine conviction that slavery was morally wrong. Political expediency was mixed with moral convictions. Many of the leading anti-Missouri men had been active in the Federalist party, which seemed to be in the process of disintegration; it was charged that they were seeking an issue on which to rebuild their party. The Federalist leadership of the anti-Missouri group caused some northern Democrats to reconsider their support of the Tallmadge amendment and to favour a compromise that would thwart efforts to revive the Federalist party.

When it reconvened in December 1819, Congress was faced with a request for statehood from Maine. At the time, there were 22 states, half of them free states and half of them slave states. The Senate passed a bill allowing Maine to enter the Union as a free state and Missouri to be admitted without restrictions on slavery. Sen. Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois then added an amendment that allowed Missouri to become a slave state but banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′. Henry Clay then skillfully led the forces of compromise, engineering separate votes on the controversial measures. On March 3, 1820, the decisive votes in the House admitted Maine as a free state, Missouri as a slave state, and made free soil all western territories north of Missouri’s southern border.

When the Missouri constitutional convention empowered the state legislature to exclude free blacks and mulattoes, however, a new crisis was brought on. Enough northern congressmen objected to the racial provision that Clay was called upon to formulate the Second Missouri Compromise. On March 2, 1821, Congress stipulated that Missouri could not gain admission to the Union until it agreed that the exclusionary clause would never be interpreted in such a way as to abridge the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizens. Missouri so agreed and became the 24th state on August 10, 1821; Maine had been admitted the previous year on March 15.

Although slavery had been a divisive issue in the United States for decades, never before had sectional antagonism been so overt and threatening as it was in the Missouri crisis. Thomas Jefferson described the fear it evoked as “like a firebell in the night.” Although the compromise measures appeared to settle the slavery-extension issue, John Quincy Adams noted in his diary, “Take it for granted that the present is a mere preamble—a title page to a great, tragic volume.” Sectional conflict would grow to the point of civil war after the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and was declared unconstitutional in the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

What was the primary objective of the Missouri Compromise (1820)?

Westward Expansion: Encounters at a Cultural Crossroads

The expansion of the United States into the territory west of the Mississippi River began with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. President Thomas Jefferson nearly doubled the size of the nation by negotiating a price of $15 million to purchase 828,800 square miles from France, including all or part of 14 current states. In 1804, Jefferson sent an expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the area. The three-year expedition produced new understanding of the geography and resources of the western part of the continent. In the 1830s and 1840s, “manifest destiny”, the idea that the United States was destined to expand across the entire continent, was used to promote further territorial expansion. And the nation expanded quickly:

In 1845 the United States annexed Texas, in 1846 the Oregon Treaty ended British claims to Oregon Territory, in 1848, following the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded much of the Southwest to the United States and in 1853 the United States bought an additional tract of land from Mexico.

States joined the Union at a relatively fast pace: California became a state in 1850 and Oregon in 1859, Nevada in 1864, Nebraska in 1867, Colorado in 1876, South and North Dakota, Montana, and Washington in 1889, Wyoming and Idaho in 1890, and Utah in 1896. As new towns like Denver and Phoenix sprang up in these new states, established towns and cities grew to accommodate the new industries and new populations that westward expansion brought with it.

A number of factors fueled migration west. Trappers, settlers, and miners headed West from the eastern United States prior to the Civil War. The Homestead Act, passed in 1862, allowed settlers to claim 160 acres of land for free. Another important factor was completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869; the railroad led to much more rapid western migration and also facilitated economic development.

What significant event nearly doubled the size of the United States in 1803, marking the beginning of westward expansion?

STRATEGY AS STORY: JUDGMENT, BIAS, AND THE NARRATIVE BEHIND THE DECISION TO INVADE IRAQ

Candidate George W. Bush pondered the feasibility of some truly decisive end game with Iraq even before he was elected. In spite of this, the first months of his presidency were characterized by a restraint reminiscent of his father’s approach to foreign policy. This changed after 9/11. There was a risk that the public would perceive al Qaeda’s attack as so random in execution, and so destructive in nature, that it represented a new type of danger from which the government could not defend the nation. A key part of the administration’s response involved confronting the collapse of strategic paradigms by generating a new narrative to express new theories, concepts and applications. The goal was to focus anger and fear by explaining the threat and depicting it as vulnerable to American power. The nature of this narrative was such that, as the magnitude of the threat grew, the administration increasing! y treated possibility as certainty. At the same time, strategic discourse was structured to minimize dissent– which followed logically from the government’s employment of certainty. This closed narrative was 20 vulnerable to errors in judgment because it resisted both perception and integration of new facts.

Describing the structure of a narrative form, however, does not account for how errors actually emerge within the decision-making process. The Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq provides a case study for how such errors arise in practice. Cognitive biases grow out of heuristics, or mental short cuts, common to all human beings. This section examines how such biases arose to influence national strategy. The events of 9111 paralyzed the United States and shattered nascent strategic paradigms. Ultimately, this shock generated a fixation on Black Swan events-radical outliers that cause disproportionate change and are, by their nature, unpredictable. The Bush narrative re-constructed the process of inductive reasoning on an intuitive level and in response to the horror of the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11.

Because of the structure of this narrative, actors were not able to adapt to new observations; various biases were able to shape decision-making in a way that made the decision to invade Iraq almost inevitable. This decision was based on three central elements: (1) Determining the identity of the state actor most likely to aid trans-national terrorists. (2) A belief in the nexus of terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction. (3) Acceptance of a high-risk method (invasion) as the best way to neutralize the threat. Lacking observational inputs, distinct types of bias shaped each of these elements in specific and important ways as the Administration struggled to define and operationalize a new security paradigm.

What cognitive bias, rooted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, significantly influenced the Bush Administration’s decision-making process regarding the invasion of Iraq?

Out of all the fields of productivity, which field(s) has/have a percent change in cost more than 3%?

*Note that O stands for output, L stands for Labor productivity, HW stands for Hours worked, U stands for Unit labor costs, HC stands for Hourly compensation, and R is real hourly compensation.

Violent Crime Rates Fall in the U.S.

The violent crime rate in the U.S. has returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, an annual release from the FBI has found. There were 380.7 violent crimes per 100,000 people reported to the FBI from law enforcement agencies last year, a 0.1 point decrease from 2019. In 2020, the rate had been as high as 398.5, while the FBI estimates that it stood at 387.0 in 2021.

2020 saw a spike in murders and aggrevated assaults in the U.S. that has not been fully understood. Reasons like pandemic stress, the proliferation of guns in the country and distrust in police have been named as potential reasons. Rates for both crime types have come down in 2022 but remain above pre-pandemic levels. It is due to the decrease in the rate of rapes and robberies, which are lower now than before the pandemic, that the overall rate of violent crime has come down to 2019 levels once again.

Looking at property crimes, including motor vehicle theft, burglary, larceny and theft, the rate stood at 1,954.4 incidents in 2022, up from 1,832.3 in 2021. It was the first rise in many years as the rate had been falling almost continuously since the 1990s. While burglary rates continued to drop, motor vehicle theft as well as the more common larceny-theft category have been seeing rising rates since 2020 and 2021, respectively.

Which crime rate falls most out of all the crimes from the year 2019?